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tv   FOX News Watch  FOX News  September 22, 2012 8:30pm-9:00pm PDT

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>> dramatic developments in libya sparked by the killing of ambassador chris stevens. thousands stormed the compound and set them on fire. they warned of a revolution to get rid of islamic extremist. fbi rages are investigating if the attacks that led to his death and three other americans were an inside job.
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trader joe recalling peanut butter over a salmonella scare. so far 29 cases were reported in 18 states. the fib -- fda is investigating whether any items of contaminated. back to the journal and editorial report. the journal e report. i'll see you back here at 6 p.m. eastern. ♪ >> was the obama convention bounce a bust. much made about the president's lead on the polls with those on the left and right, suggesting that republican rival mitt romney is headed toward certain debate. but g.o.p. polls, let's take a closer look at the numbers and he sees something else. good to see you again. >> great to be with you. >> let's take the question first about the bounce.
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has it faded? >> this rush to judgment is truly breath taking. there's so many people who basically declared the mitt romney campaign over. six weeks before the election, before four debates, before an october jobs report. and i think if you really want to get a sense of where this race is, paul, you need to forget the headlines and look at the data. there are a number of good websites that aggregate the data. real clear politics and pollster.com. if you do that, what you'll discover is that the obama lead over romney in june, as an average of all polls is 2.3%, in july, it was 2.5. in august, it was 2.4, and in september, so far, it's somewhere between 2.5 and 3, depending on the day you look. so, essentially, this race is no different now than it was throughout the summer. >> okay. >> and yet, everybody's declared the campaign over. >> explain something to, i think, viewers who are looking
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at the-- these media polls, many media polls that come out. you pew poll, the wall street journal nbc poll and they show romney behind, 4, 5, sometimes 7 percentage points whereas the gallup poll is essentially tied. how do you explain that contradiction. the gallup poll is one doing this for decades and tracks daul daul-- daily on a daily basis. >> a lot of difference for the polls, paul, is in the democrat versus republican balance in the sample. in 2008, according to exit polls, there were seven points more democrats in the lelectorae than republicans. in 2010, no difference. in 2004, no difference. so a lot of the difference in these polls depends upon what you assume the electorate will look like. many of the polls with the biggest leads for obama are counting on the 2008, plus 7 democratic ballot.
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>> paul: a big gap. >> i don't think that's going to happen. it's a big gap. i don't think it's going to happen, never happened before in the last 14 years. >> paul: so do you follow gallop or do you think that the average of the poll, real clear politics average is the right -- which number is the best to look at for people who care on a daily basis. >> i think the best to look at is the average of credible professionally done polls and you've mentioned several right now. if you take a look at the average of the polls and even out some of the sampling difference and i think it's fair to say right now, president obama is ahead by somewhere around 3 percentage points. >> paul: 3 percentage points. the other thing happening if you look the at the data, the president's approval rating creeping up. in some polls, 49, 50%, not too far, pretty close to where it was with george w. bush in 2004 when he later won reelection in november creeping town 49, 50, in september. is that a very important number to watch?
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>> yes, it is. president obama is right on the cusp. he's well below the job approval ratings of bill clinton and ronald reagan when they were reelected, but well above the approval ratings of bush 41 and jimmy carter when they lost. so, he's right on the cusp. another good number to look at is how satisfied people are in this countries, according to gallup. 68% are dissatisfied. that's down from 77%, but we've gone from absolutely terrible to just really, really bad. that is not something the president can count on. >> paul: now, still that gives an opening for mitt romney to be able to make up that 3 point average gap. what are the bright spots in the data for romney, saying, okay, how can i make up this lead? >> bright spots is that people are focused almost exclusively on the economy and who can get this economy going. we've seen how in the middle east our attention can be
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diverted temporarily, but people out there in real america are totally focused on who can get this economy going. they're scared, they're open to mitt romney. he hasn't yet made the sale. >> and in making the sale. does that mean being specific about his economic plan? because i've had this view that people are looking for somebody who, not just going to make general promises or criticize the current president, but say, look, here is how i'm going to improve in our lives and i am perfect the economy. because he has to do that with some specificity? >> he has to pay a compelling vision and be very persuasive, that he knows how to fix it i don't know that he needs 57 specific points. >> how about three? >>, but i do-- i do think he needs 3 or 4 or 5, but he needs to put some meet on the bones and paint a compelling comprehensive vision for now he knows how-- how he knows how to fix this
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problem because barack obama clearly has not fixed it. >> paul: thank you for being here and telling us where the race really stands. >> so good to be with you, paul. >> paul: still ahead, mitt romney took heat a few weeks ago claiming that the obama administration was gutting bill clinton's landmark welfare reform law. [ cat 1 ] i am not a vegetarian... look at these teeth! they're made for meat! [ cat 2 ] do i look like i'm stalking plants? [ male announcer ] most dry foods add plant protein, like gluten but iams never adds gluten.
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governors, asked if they could have wavers to try new ways to people on welfare back to work, the obama administration listened and the administration agreed to give wavers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20% and they could keep the wavers only if they did increase employment. now, did i make myself clear in the requirement was for more work, not less. >> paul: that was former president bill clinton at the democratic national convention defending president obama's efforts to rewrite his 1996 welfare reform legislation. the house voted this week to block the administration's changes to that landmark law, changes mitt romney says will gut welfare to work requirements. we're back with dan henninger, james freeman and kim strassel. so, dan, bill clinton says that was all about expanding work.
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is that true? >> no, it's not true. the actual, you know, progressives to have been upset about welfare reform since bill clinton passed it. i was going to say it's a little shameless for the president, but clinton, you know. >> paul: that's what he does. >> that's what he does. it's all about the-- i mean, it's very kind of bureaucrat particular, but it's about the definition of what the work requirement is and they are proposing to expand it in such a way that it virtually has no meaning. as for that 20% increase in employment, this is the sort of thing that the bureaucracies themselves self-define. and the problem, the biggest problem here, paul, is thatted good thing about clinton's welfare reform, it prevented the states or anyone, hhs from gaming the system like this and causing spending to increase. >> it was one of the forms of this sort that doesn't let the bureaucracies, game it and that's why spending always rises. this one works and now they're cutting like that.
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>> paul: the architect this have waiver, mark green berg was a critic of welfare reform working outside-- outside of policy and now they're looking at waiver, and joe rago dug up this fact. this is rooted in actually an ideological criticism of welfare reform. >> we've had a reality check, clinton and other democrats claiming for a while, oh, this doesn't gut the reform. nothing to see here, and 19 democrats in the house this week voting with the republicans to affirm the earlier policy. >> the vote was 250-164, which is an overwhelming number. >> kim, what about the politics this have? one of the things that just stuns me this week is that the romney campaign made welfare reform in the summer a big issue, the issue of the waiver, and this week despite the vote,
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you don't hear a peep from the romney campaign. >> they were having kind after bad week and i think that sort of passed through, but look, what they've hit on, why they brought this up this summer, this is a very powerful issue for a lot of americans, here is the thing, most americans think doe don't mind america having a social thinking, and giving to those truly in need, but they want to know that this is limited and that we have a policy making people go back to work, if they are able to do so. and especially in this economic times that are very tough. they get very annoyed at the idea people simply who are not working and receiving welfare benefits when they might be, and that's what mr. romney has been tapping into and it's powerful, which is why you saw those democrats vote with republicans. >> so powerful that the romney campaign is going to stop talking about it? is that where we're at. i just don't get it, i don't get it. >> they shouldn't and there's a lot more to talk about if mr. romney chooses to. the other part of this we haven't mentioned is since the
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1996 law, many architects of the law says there's no waiver authority. this is not legal. >> paul: that's part of the debate in 1996 how much discretion the states would have. >> but for mr. romney, the opportunity here is here we have still another reminder to a lot of americans how many people there are struggling in this economy, how many people need assistance, and another case where the obama administration is looking for still another way to transfer wealth from taxpayers to others. instead of figuring out how you get the private economy growing. if you could just create some incentives to get the private capital in here you wouldn't need all of the government programs. >> one other issue that's in the air right now, dependency, on government programs. welfare reform was passed because dependency on welfare was a real destructive problem, mothers and grandmothers handing the-- >> generation to generation.
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>> and the idea here nice to make people go on welfare and back sliding into the culture of dependency. >> paul: we want people to escape poverty and get out and that means you've got to get into the work force. >> when we come back, chicago kids went back to school after teachers there suspended the teachers there suspended the str so you say men are superior drivers? yeah. then how'd i get this... [ voice of dennis ] ...safe driving bonus check? every six months without an accident, allstate sends a check. ok. [ voice of dennis ] silence. are you in good hands?
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>> in this contract we gave her children sitting at the table. in past negotiations, taxpayers paid more, but our kids got less. this time our taxpayers are paying less and our kids are getting more. >> 350,000 chicago school children returned to class on wednesday after the teachers union there voted to suspend its
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seven-day strike. chicago mayor rahm emanuel called it, and the features editor david fief has been following the story and colin, your take on who won. you heard rahm emanuel, was he right? >> i think when we look at this, basically-- i guess the answer is basically no. when you look at this five, ten years ago, a lot of people following the numbers on this are going to look back and say, hey, this was a moment where we saw a train wreck coming and decided to basically continue down the same track. and could have got some significant incremental improvements here, they mangled to keep some of the principal control and some, you know, did get some movement on teacher evaluation, but overall, i think that this is still going to be a situation where the unions are in control here and i think they've proved that.
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now sha now, the big thing coming down the line is the pension issue for the teachers. >> paul: big, big payments due coming to the state, each year, several hundred million dollars. colin, rahm emanuel might say, you want this perfect, but these things take time. we've got incremental change, that's the way that the system work and foot in the day on teacher evacuations, and what's wrong with that? >> what's wrong with that, paul, the students there now are going to suffer in the interim. if you look at this, you basically have-- this is a civil rights issue, under 60% of chicago students are graduating from high school and in the really bad neighborhoods, it's even worse than that. so, those students are being failed right now and that's not something that can necessarily wait. they had a chance here, i think, to fight a little bit harder, but they didn't for, i think, partially political reasons.
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>> and the political reason was because there's an election coming and a showdown would not be very good politics? >> election coming and this is obama's hometown and the democrats facing off with the unions and isn't a story that anyone really wants to talk about here, so, i think that was a large part of it. >> david, you met with rahm emanuel a week before the strike was settled and you wrote that he had a pretty calm, cool attitude toward this, a guy who is not necessarily known for political cool. he can get pretty combative. you, what's your take on the outcome? >> well, when we met that week as the strike was going on, he was a man who want today make a deal. as you said, he didn't bring the fire and the-- the flamboyant aggressiveness that he-- >> that he brings to republicans. >> right. >> and he wanted to make a deal essentially because there's an election coming up. a chief fundraiser for president obama and this wasn't an appropriate time, six or seven weeks before the election to have a major fight in the president's hometown with
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organized labor and essentially followed consistently through the week. he in fact, did make that deal and i think that the additional point not only is this incremental and not only is it harmful for kids over the next three or four contract years, a point that this was an enormous opportunity cost. if this was an opportunity in a high profile way to bring the moral and the fiscal case for school reform out of the subterranean and bring it to national attention. rahm emanuel clearly decided he didn't want to do that and succeeded in not doing it. >> paul: but joel klein, the former new york city chancellor, running the subsidiary of our parent company, in the paper, this was a watershed event. showed democrats, not just republicans, not just conservative, but democratic leaders were willing to take at that strike and confront the unions and a big moment politically that's going to play out in the years to come? >> i think the gravity of the moment is yet to be determined. it's true that he took a strike
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and reform agenda and true in that he joins other democrats like the mayor of los angeles, for example, so there's a movement as mr. klein wrote where democrats are willing to take this on, but if they're willing to take it on in a way that ends up 17 1/2% raise on teachers, and not going to help very much. >> is it going down in chicago it's finally over, colin? >> i think that parents are reloved to have their kids back in school, relieved. but it's going to have enormous costs for the school system and i think that moody's looked at this and it was credit negative here. >> paul: right. >> here this strike so they're going to have to make more quick adjustments, maybe more charter schools. >> paul: that would be a good outcome, but that will be fought every step of the way by the unions, too. we have to take one more break. when we come back, ou >> announcer: this is the day. the day that we say to the world of identity thieves "enough."
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>>. >> paul: time for a big close hits and misses of the week. kim first to you. >> i go to monday monica lewinsky. to land a $12 million contract for a tell our memoir about her time with bill clinton. just as old bill out there charming the pants off the nation on behalf of barack obama you see democrats are ramping up arguments that republicans wage a war on women. here comes monica no doubt life was really like under our life under our last president. >> this is big myth, urban outfiters. the store has been selling a posters that glorifies che who is iconic even though a murderer that dominates cuba 50 years later. after criticism from new york
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based human rights organization, they decided not to sell the poster. >> paul: can you out do stros sel? >> no one can do that. and second court of appeals judge, raymond lo here who blocked a decision that would bring attention overseas into chaos. a group of journalists led by "new york times" foreign correspondent obama administration were afraid they were going to be arrested by a policy that allows the government to dwayne associated forces to al-qaeda. this decision basically kept things more toward the status quo and keep things from becoming a mess. >> you know those wind turbines, you know what turns those? your tax dollars. we're learning just maybe congressional republicans are going to kill the billion dollar a year tax credit that has been moving

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